Amazon Is Bringing Alexa to Hospitals, Nursing Homes

Amazon has partnered with numerous hospitals and service providers to make Alexa-compatible devices available to seniors, hospital patients, and the people caring for them.

Alexa is only 8 years old, and presumably it can't suffer from any maladies, but that isn't stopping Amazon from pushing the voice assistant into senior living communities and healthcare systems.

The company says it's partnering with hospitals and service providers to make it easier for them to deploy Alexa-compatible devices to their networks via the Alexa Smart Properties management platform. In addition to bringing the voice assistant closer to ubiquity, deploying these devices is supposed to offer a variety of benefits to seniors, hospital patients, and the people who care for them.

"Alexa Smart Properties enables senior living residents to keep in touch with their loved ones, connect with their community, access community news, and more, using the Amazon Echo device in their room," Amazon says. "Family members and friends outside the property get peace of mind knowing they can easily get in touch with residents through Alexa calling."

The platform is supposed to offer similar benefits to hospitals. Amazon says that healthcare systems will also be able to "increase productivity, conserve medical supplies and protective equipment, such as masks, gloves, and gowns, and free up staff time to provide more personalized care" by utilizing Alexa-enabled features such as voice calling and Drop In so they don't have to enter patients' rooms.

It doesn't seem like it will take long for Alexa to become more common in these environments. Amazon says it's already partnered with the Atria and Eskaton senior living communities; the Boston Children’s Hospital, Cedars-Sinai, BayCare, and Houston Methodist hospitals; and solution providers including K4Connect, Lifeline Senior Living, Aiva, and Vocera to help Alexa Smart Properties expand.

The company was quick to head off criticism of this expansion, too, by devoting a section of the announcement to privacy and security concerns raised by Alexa's expansion into healthcare:

"Alexa Smart Properties senior living and healthcare solutions were designed with privacy in mind. No personal information is shared with Alexa to use the device, and voice recordings are not saved," Amazon says. "Every Amazon Echo device offers multiple layers of privacy protection, and residents and patients can disable Alexa’s ability to respond to the wake word at any time by simply pressing the mute button on top of their Echo device. Amazon implements administrative, technical, and physical safeguards for protected health information received as part of HIPAA-eligible skill interactions."

Amazon didn't immediately respond to our request for additional information about how Alexa-enabled devices used in healthcare-related facilities might differ from their consumer counterparts, or how the security of those devices will be monitored. Concerns about the data Alexa shares with Amazon (and the information its Skills provide to third-party developers) are even more critical in these environments.

It won't be long until those privacy and security claims are tested. Alexa Smart Properties "will support senior living and healthcare solutions in the US starting next month." Anyone curious about the platform has been asked to submit questions to Amazon via an online form.

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